


Split Infinitives

by Eligh



Category: Grimm (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 16:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eligh/pseuds/Eligh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick and Monroe are in Starfleet, and are assigned to the <i>Enterprise</i> when Vulcan sends its distress call. </p>
<p>(You don't really need to be a Star Trek fan to understand, but you may enjoy it more if you are.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Split Infinitives

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for another story I've been working on, but after writing it I realized that it didn't really fit the rest of the format... I still like it, though, because Star Trek is my favorite and Grimm is just so damn enjoyable.

Nick watched from the stands as Commander Spock and the Kirk kid eyefucked each other and fought down the urge to laugh.

“They’re adorable,” came a whispered voice in his right ear, and Nick turned to glare at Monroe, giving him his best Vulcan-eyebrow. Monroe scoffed.

“You do realize you’re talking about Commander Spock, right?” Nick whispered back, the severe look faltering, replaced by his usual grin, but then turned full force and glared back as the cadet in front of them hushed them. Still, he lowered his voice when he looked back at Monroe. “You’d suck his dick if he so much as glanced at you.”

At the front of the auditorium, Spock brought up Kirk’s father, and Monroe listened gleefully for a moment before jabbing Nick in the side. “Not true. Just because he’s linguistically talented—”

“Bet you’d like to show him your linguistic talent,” Nick leered, and earned himself another shushing. He was opening his mouth to continue teasing Monroe when a flurry of movement caught his eye. Together, they watched as an aide jogged to the front of the room, then watched as the Admiral’s face turned worried.

“We’ve received a distress call from Vulcan…”

Nick and Monroe exchanged glances, then rose and hurried to the shuttlebay hanger with the rest of the cadets.

In the sudden rush of students, Nick was being buffeted back and forth, and for a minute, he was almost separated from Monroe by the swell of the crowd. But then Monroe was ducking though the sea of red-uniformed cadets and Nick felt his hotter-than-human fingers close on his wrist, steering them toward where Nick could just make out the hurrying form of Commander Calvin, their supervising officer.

Monroe navigated the crowds easily, graceful in a way that that seemed counterintuitive to his stocky, six-foot frame. Nick had wished more than once that he had the same control over himself that Monroe always exhibited—granted, they were about evenly matched when it came to combat training, but in day-to-day life, it still seemed that Nick hadn’t grown out of his slightly awkward teenage phase. But that’s what he got for accepting an early appointment to Starfleet Academy, he supposed. He was one of the youngest cadets, just nineteen in his senior year. Monroe was twenty-three, a fact that Nick had happily exploited in the cause of Alcohol over the past couple years.

As Monroe half-dragged him through the crowds, Nick caught a few odd glances from his fellow cadets, though he barely gave them any notice anymore. He was aware of the conundrum they posed, of the looks they still got around campus, even after four years here. When word got out they were assigned to be roommates by random chance as freshmen, there’d even been a betting pool (still was one, but only the new cadets bothered with it now) about which one of them would kill the other. But contrary to everyone’s expectations, neither of them had had any issues overcoming their supposed instincts, and had been almost inseparable from the first week on.

They were an unlikely couple of friends, a grimm and a blutbad, though they’d never really had any problems with each other. Wesen weren’t allowed in Starfleet unless they were wieder, and Nick wasn’t your average grimm. After all, it wasn’t like Nick dragged axes with him everywhere he went, and Monroe had always been careful to keep his claws sheathed.

In the end, they’d ended up being the perfect counterpoint to one another. Nick was exuberant and social, Monroe more reserved and studious, and they kept one another on track. Their freshman assignment was vaulted as one of the (few) good decisions by the housing board.

Still, people were curious—wesen had come out into human society relatively recently, (effectively dragging grimms into the spotlight with them) so questions were inevitable. Usually however, it was Nick doing the actual explaining—Monroe preferred electronic interference between himself and most people—but Nick didn’t mind. He told the story of wesen and grimm history to anyone who asked, usually with a wide grin on his face and a flair for the dramatic. He liked to start his stories with ‘once upon a time,’ which invariably made Monroe roll his eyes and scoff.

The only thing about Starfleet and their view of wesen/grimm relations that really annoyed both of them was the expectation of their eventual roles within the ‘fleet. With both their ancestors’ histories so firmly steeped with violence, (talk about species profiling) it had been generally assumed that they’d go the security route—and if they’d wanted, Nick was sure they would have been well received there.

But as Nick had explained countless times over the last few years, there were _brains_ behind all this beauty. Still it had been a bit of a surprise (to their fellow cadets, at least, though to their instructors it was apparent enough) when they’d declared their specialties in their third year. Nick had taken the engineering track and Monroe had gone into communications.

To everyone’s amazement except Nick’s, Monroe turned out to be incredibly gifted in communications, and anyone who doubted him only needed to listen to his spot-on translation of T’Pol’s philosophies to be convinced. He was second in the his field only to Cadet Uhura, which was certainly saying something, and the fact that he could insult you in seventeen languages was truly impressive.

As for Nick, his idol was Lieutenant Montgomery Scott—nevermind that the man was exiled to some frozen planet, his theories of transwarp beaming were fascinating—and the fact that he could actually make sense of the math put him in a class above the rest. He was doubling in the command track, and it was generally accepted that he would have his own ship within a few years.

But for now, they were just two more cadets in a crowd of red that was pouring into the shuttlebay.

“What ship do you think we’ll get?” Nick asked breathlessly as they arrived in the hanger.

Monroe didn’t bother to answer him, instead concentrating on weaving around the growing groups of cadets, intent on getting them to their assigned post. He didn’t let go of Nick’s wrist, either, even though they were finally out of the worst of the crowd.

Of course, Nick didn’t mind—in fact wouldn’t have minded if Monroe had laced their fingers and dragged him along that way. Not that he was actually ever planning on telling his best friend that. As good together as they were, they’d never done anything more than some vaguely joking flirting, (Nick couldn’t even be sure of that, maybe it was his overactive imagination seeing what he wanted to see) and Nick wouldn’t do anything to mess up their friendship. So he contented himself with little touches like this, and tried to force himself to keep a purely heterosexual distance between himself and his friend.

“Monroe,” he asked, still gamely following, his wrist trapped, “Ships? Which ones?” He felt a sudden surge of worry—this distress call and sudden assignments meant that no one had had a chance to finalize their shipboard assignments, meaning their posts could be entirely random. “You don’t think they’ll split us up, do you?”

Monroe glanced at him and flashed him a reassuring smile. “I don’t know,” he said. “I bet you get the _Enterprise_ , though. You’d deserve it.” A look that Nick couldn’t read flashed across his face, and he added, “And if we do get split up, there’s always subspace comms. We’ll stay in touch, man.” He looked away, and though Nick was fairly certain he was imagining the now-possessive grip on his wrist, he let himself bask in it for a moment. They finally reached the growing crowd of cadets gathering around the now-stationary Commander Calvin, and Monroe seemingly reluctantly dropped Nick’s wrist, much to Nick’s disappointment.

“I bet you get the _Enterprise_ , too,” he said reassuringly, and tried to believe his words—positive thinking or some such thing. “They wouldn’t split us up.” Monroe glanced at him, that familiar, small smile on his face, the smile that Nick was pretty sure was only ever directed at him. “How great is it going to be,” Nick continued, fighting down his blush and pushing aside the butterflies in his stomach with practiced ease. “You and me and the stars…” Suddenly aware of how sappy he sounded, he lost the battle to his blush, and looked down to straighten his uniform.

When he looked back up, Monroe’s eyes were flashing with some emotion that Nick couldn’t read, and he opened his mouth to say something in return. But Calvin chose that moment to start barking out assignments, apparently having decided enough of his cadets were present. Nick and Monroe both snapped their attention toward him, straining to hear over the dull roar of the bay. After a few seconds of tense waiting, Nick was one of the first names called out— _“_ Burkhardt, _Enterprise”_ —and he grinned like an idiot when Monroe snaked an arm around his back in a short hug of congratulations; grinned harder at how Monroe’s hand lingered for a moment on the small of his back. 

And when Monroe’s name was rattled off— _Enterprise_ as well—Nick had a flash of bravery and slipped his hand into his friend’s to give it a reassuring squeeze (he could always explain it away as the excitement of the moment). “Toldja,” he said, then laughed as Monroe rapidly woged back and forth for a few seconds. He shoved his shoulder and Monroe glared at him. “Relax,” Nick said. “We’re going to be great.”

“Yea,” Monroe said, and hesitantly squeezed Nick’s hand back. “Come on, we gotta get on the shuttle.” Nick grinned at him as they jogged toward their future, only pausing for a second to shoot a confused look at the Kirk kid, who looked to be on the verge of throwing up and was being dragged in the opposite direction by a man Nick didn’t recognize.

 

The shuttle ride was uneventful, save for the moment when Monroe turned to Nick and said, “Nick, look, I—” Unfortunately, he was cut off, and Nick didn’t get to hear just what Monroe was, because Commander Calvin started talking about what to do once they got aboard, and they needed to give him their full attention.

But when the shuttle had landed and they were piling off, Monroe grabbed Nick’s shoulder and steered him toward the side of the docking bay before they went their separate ways.

“Be fucking careful,” Monroe said, his forehead crinkled with worry. “You know these ships, people aim for the engines. Which means you.”

Nick tried to smile reassuringly. “I’ll be fine. You just worry about keeping me in contact with the rest of the ship.” He tapped his ear where he’d already stuck in one of the mini-comm units. “Make sure I’m on your frequency.”

“Yea, yea,” Monroe agreed. Nick smiled once more at him, then turned to go, but before he got one step away, he suddenly felt strong arms circling him as Monroe pulled him in for a tight hug. “Promise me you’ll be careful,” Monroe said into his ear, and Nick sucked in a breath, automatically bringing his arms up and clinging tight.

“Promise,” he said, then teased, “You’d be lost without me.”

Monroe pulled back and held him at arms length. “You have no idea, baby Grimm.” He swallowed. “Okay, see you later.”

“Yea,” Nick muttered. Monroe nodded one last time and turned, jogging toward the corridor that would take him to communications. Nick watched him go, then shook himself and headed off. That had been unexpected.

 

The next hours were stressful, to say the least. No one knew what was wrong with Vulcan—Monroe told Nick, in a hushed voice over a private comm line, that they weren’t getting any signals. It was like everything was scrambled. They couldn’t even contact the rest of the fleet.

Nick swung through engineering, double and triple checking every system in his little corner of the engine room. This ship was beautiful—gleaming, state of the art tech, graceful lines even when there didn’t need to be (designers always forgot about making engineering beautiful as well as practical). And the people he was working with were the best of the best. Nick got the feeling he would love working on this ship.

But as stress-inducing as the trip to Vulcan had been, it was nothing compared to what coming out of warp was like. Suddenly there was the scream of metal and showers of sparks—Olson, Nick’s direct commanding officer, disappeared and few minutes later, Nick overheard someone saying he was dead. But he didn’t have time to think about that—he and the rest of the engineers were forced to try to jury-rig the damn ship to keep her going.

“Someone tell whoever’s piloting this fucking that to stop running into shit!” Nick shouted the tenth time he was knocked off his feet, and the orion woman he was attacking a panel with snorted in agreement.

There was a buzz in his ear and a tinny voice said, “ _Nick, you read me, man?_ ”

“A little busy, Monroe,” Nick said, harsher than he’d intended, but he could hear the smile in Monroe’s voice when he responded, regardless.

“ _Bridge says we need more maneuverability._ ”

Nick made a final adjustment and high-fived the orion woman. “Fuck yea, just in time. Tell the bridge they’ve got it.” Monroe didn’t say anything else, but a few seconds later, Nick watched the engines ramp up and felt the telltale rumble of the ship’s acceleration.

“You good, Monroe?” he asked into his earpiece once he assessed the room, realizing there were no more emergencies, and there was a responding snort. Apparently Monroe hadn’t disengaged their comm.

“ _No problems in communications, baby Grimm_ ,” came the response, but Nick could hear a wail of alarms behind him.

“You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you?” Nick asked, slightly concerned—as badass as he knew Monroe was, no one could survive if there was a sudden decompression or something.

“ _I’m good,_ ” Monroe said, his voice a touch more serious. “ _We got hit by some ridiculous bombs or something—I’ve never seen weapons like them—but we’ve got the fires out and no one’s really that hurt._ ”

“ _You’re_ not hurt?” Nick clarified. There was another snort.

“ _I got a burn on my hand._ ” There was a pause, and then more hesitantly, “ _You can kiss it and make it better later, okay?_ ”

“I will,” Nick said, grinning to himself and feeling reckless, adrenaline pumping through his system. “Don’t think I won’t.”

There was silence for a moment, then, “ _Maybe let’s talk about that face to face._ ” But that smile was still in Monroe’s voice, so Nick ran with it. Maybe he was just buzzing from the adrenaline of a job well-done, maybe he was reading too much into that hug in the shuttle bay, maybe he was going to fuck everything up—but they were in _space,_ and Nick, realist that he was, knew the battle wasn’t going that well. But that just made him want to damn the consequences, go on full speed ahead. He pressed his fingers to his ear, nestling his comm in more securely, and lowered his voice slightly.

“I can kiss you other places, too, if you want. Maybe you’ve got a burn on your lips, or your stomach, or—”

“Okay!” the orion woman interjected, but she was grinning. She leaned close enough to Nick that her voice would be picked up on his comm. “This engineer’s got to do engineering things, sexy mysterious communications man. You guys can have comm sex later.” Nick smiled at her, then reached up and touched his ear again, the closest he could get to Monroe right now.

“I’m serious,” he said softly. “I’m—”

“ _Nick, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out,_ ” came Monroe’s voice, suddenly breathless and cracking. “ _And we can have a long talk about it. Later. Physically. In our dorm room. But right now, we gotta work_.”

“Okay,” Nick said, near reeling. Trust them to come to a conclusion about one another in the worst possible moment. “I’ll hold you to that.” There was another amused snort, and then the quiet click that accompanied the line disengaging.

He glanced around the engine room—it wasn’t shiny anymore. Fires and exploding consoles had caused a fair amount of damage, not to mention all the engineer-inflicted destruction. There were wires everywhere, hanging naked, a few of them openly sparking. Nick glanced at the woman. “You think they’ll be pissed we broke the ship?”

“Nah,” she said. “We got them what they needed.” 

“That we did,” Nick said with a smile. But then above them there was an ominous creak. They looked up in time to see a precariously balanced support beam begin to shift—“Shit,” Nick breathed. The next moment the ship rocked, hit by another round of explosions, and then it was too late.

 

Nick regained consciousness to a great deal of pain. He tried to suck in a breath and found that he was unsuccessful in this; looked down and he saw why.

A spar of metal was jutting through his chest, red with his blood, and he reached up, touched it gently with shaking fingers. “That’s not very good,” he murmured to no one in particular. The orion woman was either unconscious or dead, trapped under debris next to him and Nick had a momentary pang of regret that he never got her name.

His thoughts wandered in the direction that it was a still good ship to die for.

He reached up and pressed his ear, engaging the comm. “Burkhardt to Monroe, over,” he whispered. There was a quiet buzz, then Monroe picked up.

“ _Nick, I said we’d talk about this in the dorms,_ ” he said, soft and teasing in Nick’s ear. Nick smiled, felt blood bubble to his lips.

“I don’t know if we’ll get a chance,” he forced out, and heard Monroe’s breath catch.

“ _Nick, are you all right?_ ”

He laughed painfully and looked down at himself, watched at the blood pulsed sluggishly around the metal spar. “I’ve got about half the engineering department slicing through my chest,” he said weakly, barely registering the sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “We got hit hard during that last volley.” He vaguely registered Monroe yelling something on an open line, something about medics to engineering. He took a breath.

“Monroe.”

“ _I’m with you, Nick._ ”

“Wanted to tell you that I love you,” Nick said, his words starting to slur together. “Too afraid, earlier. Should’ve.”

“ _Nick—_ ”

“You love me?” Nick could feel himself fading. The darkness was creeping in. “Monroe?”

There was a sob on the other end of the line, and Nick pressed his fingers (slick with blood, how did that happen) to his ear. “ _Yes,_ ” Monroe said. “ _Yes, Nick, I love you so goddamn much. Don’t die on me, Nick. Medics are on their way, just…stay with me._ ”

“Good,” Nick murmured. His eyes unfocused and he took a hitching breath. By the time Monroe’s shouts registered through his earpiece, he was already unconscious.

 

The world around Nick was fading into a bright white. Sound came next, a quiet beeping, then the smell of antiseptic. Physical sensation was the last to return, and Nick became groggily aware that one of his hands was warmer than the other.

He blinked—or tried to—and the pressure on the warmer hand tightened.

“Nick?”

Nick rolled his head to the side, finally forcing himself to crack an eye. He smiled slightly. “M’roe.”

Monroe stared at him for a long moment, then abruptly pulled his hand away and smacked Nick (lightly, but still a smack) on the side of the head.

“Hey, don’t hit the patients,” came a voice with a Georgian drawl from the other side of what was apparently the medbay, and Monroe glanced over.

“Sorry,” Monroe muttered, but then turned back to Nick. “You fucking _died_ , man.”

Nick rubbed his head, his faculties rapidly returning—probably something to do with the telltale fading sting of a hypospray on his neck. “But I’m apparently good now, huh?”

“Support beams—metal freaking _support_ _beams_ , Nick—right through your chest. Doctor McCoy said—”

“Doctor McCoy?”

“The CMO. But he said that you were really freaking lucky that you called me and I was able to get medics down to engineering. Apparently internal sensors weren’t registering right… If you’d been a few seconds slower…” Monroe trailed off, and Nick took the opportunity to reach out and lace their fingers again. Monroe looked down, a little shell-shocked. “You remember?” he said softly.

“Telling you I love you?” Nick clarified. “Yes. And I meant it. Still mean it.”

With a sniff, and suspiciously watery eyes, Monroe brought his other hand up and clasped Nick’s between his, then brought their joined hands to his face, inhaling deeply. “You—” he started, then broke off, cleared his throat. After a minute, he tried again. “You don’t get to tell me you love me and then die, you ass.” When he looked at Nick again, his eyes were blazing red, and Nick had never been so thankful he could see Monroe’s true face.

“I’m fine,” Nick argued after a beat of silence. Monroe looked pointedly down at his bandaged chest, and Nick shrugged slightly. “Will be fine, then. And so now…”

“Now you and I get to see the stars together,” Monroe finished for him. Nick smiled and tugged his hand, urging him closer. Monroe came willingly, inclining his head, and as their lips met for the first time, Nick was pretty sure the galaxy stopped its spinning in honor of the moment.  


End file.
